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Experimental psychology

In the prime of my academic career (1971-1983), I became interested in studying the perception of the physically upright, guided by visual and tactile stimuli. This evolved into a series of experiments in which visuo-spatio-proprioceptive cues were brought into conflicts. The series eventually resulted in the development of a new method and theory (10; 1983), culminating in a doctoral thesis (1977) about some of the way(s) in which humans typically solve experimentally created perceptual conflicts with reference to visuo-spatial and proprioceptive information. The results were to an interpretation in terms of Psychological Differentiation Theory.

Just click on underlined titles to read the particular paper. Scanning of papers not yet underlined are in progress.

The visuo-spatial abilities studied in the above mentioned papers constitute important facets of general intelligence. In addition, the development of these abilities reveal some of the earliest appearing and largest sex differences in first-order factorial intelligence, and tests for them “load” heavily on the higher-order intelligence factor g, which represents general intelligence in the generally accepted hierarchical intelligence model. The consistent finding of a solid sex difference in the above mentioned studies sparked the following publications on sex differences, their stability, and their cross-racial generality, as did a study on the the correlations of birth date with general intelligence:

Nyborg, H. (1983) Spatial ability in men and women: Review and new theory. Advances in Behavior Research and Therapy. (Monograph Series), 5, (whole No.2), 89-140.

2. Critique of Political Correctness, Equality, and Blank Slate Environmentalism

A formal 6-weeks written thesis is an obligatory part of the examination for my Magister’s Degree in Psychology. In 1971 my professors accordingly required me to present an account of “The relationship between Psychology and Genetics”. This was a formidable task for a then essentially left-oriented working-class student activist, who had participated in the occupations of the University of Copenhagen in 1968. It actually fundamentally changed my view on Nature-Nurture questions, and I eventually extended the thesis and turned this into the first book introducing introducing Psychogenetics (or rather Behavioral Genetics) to a Danish audience in 1972. The paradigmatic change in my understanding of behavioral science later inspired a couple of related papers, which increasingly angered left-leaning colleagues and lead to court cases (which I won; see under Polemics).

It is welknown that Nature-Nurture or gene-environment questions often generate controversy, in particular in connection with individual, sex, and race differences in general intelligence, education, and occupation. Much of the vitriolic critique against Behavioral Genetics and Differential Psychology has, since the mid-1900 century, been mounted by left-oriented academics and adherents to the Principle of Equality. Most of this critique is not based on a fair and comprehensive reading of existing literature on the possible role of genes and other biological factors – working together with environmental factors. This initiated the following publications:

Nyborg, H. (2019). Race as Social Construct. Special Issue by Guest Editor Bryan J. Pesta): Beyond Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. Psych, 1, 139-165. Doi:10.3390/psych1010011.

3. Chromosome Anomalies: Turner’s Syndrome, Klinefelter’s syndrome, and men with an extra Y-Chromosome.

One day the phone rang. It was a leading medical doctor from a close-by psychiatric hospital. He said: Given your interests in visuo-spatial abilities and their heritability, would you be interested in joining a research group studying girls, who can’t do math, are visuo-spatially disoriented, and lack some X chromosome material? This sparked the following publications:

The above mentioned research did not reveal any clear links between specific chromosome anomalies and the well-defined cognitive deficits in these women with Turner’s syndrome. This left a nagging feeling that something was left out of the analyses. Years later, while I worked at Oxford University, it struck me that besides the sex chromosome anomalies, girls and women with Turner’s syndrome also suffer from abnormally low levels of sex hormones, for which some of them were treated. This situation had not been in focus in connection with understanding the reason for their cognitive deficit. I therefore decided to study possible effect of hormones on cognition, which generated the following publications:

Traditionally psychology springs out of philosophy, and often make reference to abstract concepts like the mind, the psyche, needs, desires and will, in order to explain human behavior. However, solid research suggests that body, brain, and behavioral development is at least as much affected by genes and the physical nature of the environment, and that the gene expression can be modulated experimentally by manipulating hormonal and environmental factors. This made me suggest a new approach called Physicology. In Physicology, motives, needs, etc. are substituted as causal factors by (partly) measurable coupled intra-and intersystemic mass-molecular interactions. The goal is to , and illustrates that development and behavior may as well emanate from non-psychic bio-physical factors. This tentative program is presented in the following publications:

My doctoral dissertation studies (see 1.10; 1977 above) focused on perception of the physically upright, but sex differences continued to appear. At first I tried to control for them statistically, as I considered them a kind of unwanted “noise” in an otherwise elegant experimental design. However, as further experimental analysis suggested that the differences were robust and part of a rather general phenomenon, I decided to pursue them in their own way. Together with a study of cross-cultural differences in personality, this new interest gave rise to the following investigations:

Nyborg, H. (2005). National and sex difference in scholastic achievement among 276,164 15-year-old students: Hierarchical factor analysis of the 2003 cycle international PISA project. In: Abstract, pp. 24-25 in Proceeding of The International Society for the Study of Individual Differences, Adelaide, South Australia.

Nyborg, H., Albeck, H., & Hartmann, P. (2006). Rasch probabilistic modeling of the NLSY97 study, using the Computer Adaptive form of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (CAT-ASVAB97), confirms a significant male lead in general ability. Abstract in: Proceedings of the Sevent Annual Conference for the International Society for Intelligence Research (p. 46), Hyatt, San Francisco, CA, USA.

While working for a year at the Laboratory of Neuroendocrinology, Rockefeller University, New York, with professor Bruce McEwen, I met a biochemist, Henrik Albeck who called my attention to relations between intelligence and drug abuse. I accordingly did a couple of studies with him, Lars Larsen from Institut of Psychology, University of Aarhus, Denmark, in addition to working with Bruce McEwen and his colleagues:

Being an agnostics myself, I always wondered why even well-educated scientists could believe in supernatural phenomena like various religious persuasions and abstract gods, in the presence of having otherwise formidable formal analytic capabilities. This sparked two studies: One on the relationship between intelligence and devotion, another one on the atheism rates across nations with differing average IQs:

Shortly after the turn of the 21st. century, I became interested in analysing possible effects of the already then considerable low-IQ Southern non-Western immigration to Denmark. As official statistics increasingly mix the count of ethnic Danes with naturalized immigrants and their offspring, I first suggested an ethnically true population count, but could not raise the money needed. I then did a retro-analysis of official data, and combined them with country-of-origin IQ data from Lynn and Vanhanen and fertility data from UN and another source in a 2012 publication (see below). This angered three colleagues so much that they wrote to the publisher, asking them to retract the paper. They also filed a court case against me, and I was a couple of years later deemed scientifically dishonest on two points (see the section on Collective Fraud). However, the publisher set up a committee of four eminent scientists and asked them to independently examine the case. After having inspected the raw data, this committee found no signs of dishonesty (See Vernon, 2015). I then asked a Higher Court to reconsider the Lower Court accusation. In 2016, this court unanimously decided that the Lower Court must recall their decision about dishonesty. It never appealed this decision to the Highest Court.

Nyborg, H (2014). The life history approach to human differences, J. PhilippeRushton in Memoriam. London: The Ulster Institute for Social Science.

Newspaper debates

It has been argued that the obligatory Børge Prien Prøve used when young people are drafted to military service had a racial bias because it showed racial differences. To the contrary, it is one of the technically best IQ tests, just proving race differences:

At the age of three I witnessed the Nazi occupation of Denmark. I still remember my father then said: We definitely have to do something about this. Together with my uncles and cousins he joined the freedom fighter movement.

They all appear in this picture, with others, taken on the day of Nazi surrender in 1945, with my father standing in front on the sidestep of the car.

It is my impression that Denmark is in an even more deadly dangerous situation now with massive southern non-Western low IQ, high fertility immigration, not properly controlled by responsible authorities. The following op-eds reflect this fear, and a wish to do something about it:

Chairman: International Conference on “The Neuropsychology of Learning Disorders”, Korsor, Denmark, June 15-18, 1975. Chairing session on “Physiological and Biochemical Correlates to Learning Disorders”.
Organizer and Chairman: Symposium on “Biological, Social, and Cross-Cultural Aspects of Sex-Specific Cognitive Development”, International Society of the Study of Behavioural Development, University of York, Toronto, Canada, August, 1981.
Chairman: Symposium on “Hormonal Aspects of Psychosomatic Obstetrics/Gynecology, Twenty-First Congress of the International Society of Psychoneuroendocrinology, Buffalo/Niagara Falls, New York, USA, August 20-24, 1990.
Organizer and Chairman: Symposium on “Hormones, Intelligence, and Personality Development”, The Sixth Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID), Baltimore, MA., 17-21 July, 1993
Organizer and Chair: The VIII Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences, University of Aarhus, Denmark, July 20-24th., 1997
Chairman: Symposium on “Secular changes in intelligence”, co-sponsored by the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences and the Behavioral Genetics Society, June 2000, University of Vancouver, Canada.
Editorial Consultant: Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica. Behavioral and Brain Sciences. British Journal of Developmental Psychology. Clinical Endocrinology. Intelligence. Perceptual and Motor Skills. Personality and Individual Differences. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. Psychoneuroendocrinology.

Editorial board: Neuropsychobiology 2012 – Member of the Scientific Board for The Ulster Institute for Social Research, London.Other
1960 Olympic Bronze Medal Winner in kayak, Rome, 1960: 4 x 500 meter Relay. (Click for picture take immediately before the final competition)